Statement of Purpose Skill

An agent skill for writing, drafting, structuring, and revising Statements of Purpose (SOPs), personal statements, letters of intent, and MFA / creative-program personal statements for graduate-school, fellowship, and scholarship applications.

Works with any agent that supports the Agent Skills open standard — Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, Antigravity, OpenCode, GitHub Copilot, and others.

Built on peer-reviewed genre analysis of real, successful SOPs — not a template.

What it does

• Drafts full SOPs from scratch, rescues weak existing drafts, or reviews and gives feedback on a draft the applicant already wrote
• Adapts to program type: taught master's, MBA / business school, research/PhD, fellowship/scholarship, career change, MFA / creative programs
• Adapts to the applicant's English-fluency level
• Grounds every essay in the applicant's own truthful material
• Applies the rhetorical move framework found in admitted-applicant SOPs

Installation

Claude Code (plugin marketplace) — one command

/plugin marketplace add Haadhi76/SOP_Consultant
/plugin install statement-of-purpose@sop-consultant

Claude Code then loads the skill automatically. The skill name is statement-of-purpose.

Any other agent (Codex, Gemini, OpenCode, Copilot, …) — copy the skill folder

The skill itself lives in this repo at skills/statement-of-purpose/. Copy that one folder into your agent's skills directory (the folder name must stay statement-of-purpose):

Agent	Skills directory
Claude Code (manual)	~/.claude/skills/
Codex CLI	~/.agents/skills/
Gemini CLI / Antigravity	~/.gemini/antigravity/skills/
OpenCode	~/.config/opencode/skills/
VS Code / GitHub Copilot	.github/skills/ (project-level)

# Example — clone the repo, copy the skill folder into Claude Code's skills dir
git clone https://github.com/Haadhi76/SOP_Consultant.git
cp -r SOP_Consultant/skills/statement-of-purpose ~/.claude/skills/

The copied statement-of-purpose/ folder contains SKILL.md and the full references/ folder — no further configuration is required.

Triggering the skill

Claude will load this skill automatically when you mention:

• Statement of Purpose / SOP / personal statement
• Grad-school application essay / admissions essay
• Motivation letter / letter of intent (treated identically)
• Research statement for a graduate application
• MBA or business-school application essay
• Fellowship statement / scholarship essay / grant personal statement
• MFA or creative-program personal statement
• Reviewing or giving feedback on any of the above

You can also trigger it explicitly: "Use the statement-of-purpose skill to help me write my SOP for [program]."

Directory structure

SOP_Consultant/
├── .claude-plugin/
│   ├── marketplace.json                   # Claude Code marketplace manifest
│   └── plugin.json                        # Claude Code plugin manifest
└── skills/
    └── statement-of-purpose/
        ├── SKILL.md                       # Main skill — workflow, hard rules, file routing
        └── references/
            ├── move-framework.md                  # Rhetorical move taxonomy + appeals (ethos/logos/pathos)
            ├── style-and-voice.md                 # Register, authenticity, anti-generic-AI guidance
            ├── revision-checklist.md              # Checklist for critiquing or polishing a draft
            ├── use-case-taught-masters.md         # Taught / coursework master's calibration
            ├── use-case-mba.md                    # MBA / business-school calibration
            ├── use-case-research-phd.md           # Research master's and doctoral calibration
            ├── use-case-career-change.md          # Career-pivot modifier (layered on top of degree case)
            ├── use-case-fellowship-scholarship.md # Fellowship and scholarship calibration
            ├── use-case-mfa.md                    # MFA and creative-program calibration
            ├── fluency-fluent-or-native.md        # Guidance for fluent / native-English writers
            ├── fluency-advanced-l2.md             # Guidance for advanced non-native writers
            └── fluency-developing-l2.md           # Guidance for writers still building academic English

How the reference files are used

SKILL.md is the entry point. The reference files are deltas — they are loaded on top of the core, not instead of it.

• move-framework.md and style-and-voice.md are read for every SOP.
• revision-checklist.md is read before revising any draft.
• SKILL.md contains inline routing tables that map program type → use-case-*.md file and fluency level → fluency-*.md file. Claude selects and loads those files directly — all reference files are one level deep from SKILL.md.

Hard rules

This skill does not invent credentials, faculty names, or program details. It does not help disguise authorship or defeat AI-detection systems. The applicant's own truthful material is the only raw material. See SKILL.md for the full list of non-negotiable constraints.

Sources

Samraj & Monk (2008), Chiu (2015, 2016), López-Ferrero & Bach (2016), and Ganguly (2020, Missouri S&T thesis — style findings published in Xchanges 2021, appeals findings in English for Specific Purposes 2022).